Philly Front Office

DISCLAIMER: Friday Fun is a new segment where I write about something worth writing about that isn’t Philly related. It’s a working title.

I have two crazy A’s stories to write this year, but they only play the Phillies once so instead of learning about where your favorite mall cookies came from today, you are going to hear about the time the Oakland A’s employed a teenager as an Executive Vice President. The strangest part of this story is that you absolutely know who he is.

Worst Owners in Baseball

The A’s have never been known for good ownership. If you think the current regime headlined by John Fisher is bad then…well, you’re right about that. As bad as Fisher is though, the Athletics of the 70’s were a batshit crazy bunch under owner Charlie O. Finley. While he is more well known for both building the 3-peating A’s juggernaut and destroying it, Charlie-O made some wild decisions to both promote and police his ball club. Maybe the craziest is when he gave 11-year-old Stanley Kirk Burrell a job.

Burrell grew up in Oakland and loved two things: baseball and dancing. He found a way to make money doing both. During A’s home games, Burrell would show up to the parking lot and in front of the entrance would dance hoping some of the thousands of patrons would notice and donate some change. Well, one of those patrons was Finley. Burrell apparently did a James Brown style split in front of him and liking the kids energy hired him to be the bat boy.

Finley was the most notoriously cheap of cheap owners. That juggernaut he built included Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter, Rollie Fingers, and Vida Blue. Before the advent of MLB free agency, he could severely undercut their salaries and afford to keep the team together. It is no surprise that when free agency hit, all those legends were either sold off or not re-signed. He was cheap with the front office too.

All the A’s All Over the Place

By 1975, Finley was living and working in Chicago, not Oakland. In fact, his bare bones approach to running the team at this point left few front office people to actually attend the baseball games. In need of someone he could trust to report on the goings on in the stadium during games, Finley looked to Burrell and named him Executive Vice President. He even gave him a hat that said VP. He was 13 years old. Burrell would work for the A’s until 1980. That whole time, Finley relied on the word of an outgoing teenager to essentially spy on his players.

The players didn’t seem to mind their new boss and even gave him a nickname based on his resemblance to Hammerin’ Hank Aaron… Little Hammer. Yup, I told you you knew who this kid was. After graduating high school, Burrell left the A’s to join the Navy. Three years later, he was looking to get into the music business and borrowed money from a few A’s players and was bankrolled by Finley himself to get himself established. He was eventually signed to Capital Records as MC Hammer.

MC Hammer made it big with hits like You Can’t Touch This and 2 Legit 2 Quit along with his trademark baggy pants and dance moves. The story of MC Hammer is a cautionary tale in terms of finances in the music business, but it’s also a pretty cool story of a kid being in the right place at the right time and just being a kid doing what he loved to do.

Photo: AP

Idea for the Story: Big Hair and Plastic Grass by Dan Epstein